U.S. Pat. No. 3,695,322, issued to Anderson et al. of FMC Corporation on Oct. 3, 1972, discloses a discontinuously operating apparatus for pitting peaches comprising a multiple-lane orientation station to align the peaches so that their suture plans are transversal to the direction of their movement along the apparatus. Flights or fruit cup plates are mounted on side chains of a conveyor. The side chains run on both idler sprockets and driving sprockets being positioned at the ends of the conveyor, i.e. in the proximity of a peach feeder on one hand, and of a cutting head on the other hand. The side chains are supported on a swinging frame in order to facilitate the operation of orientation.
A device for the orientation of fruits, which is positioned under the conveyor, includes transverse rows of aligning units that are mounted on carriages driven by chains. Each aligning unit has a “finder” wheel that projects into the cups through cup apertures and is rotated by its own complex drive mechanism. When the “finder” wheel is moved and slightly projects into the cup through its aperture, the peach is rotated by the “finder” wheel. When the flights and the aligning unit advance simultaneously, the “finder” wheel oscillates about its vertical axis through an arc of 45°. The oscillating flights prevent the peach to get out of the cup. When the peach is rolled with its stem cavity being towards the bottom of the cup, the “finder” wheel engages no longer the peach surface. As the flights and the aligning unit advance, the “finder” wheel is then raised to a position for finding the peach suture, and it is no longer rotated but is only subjected to oscillations about the vertical axis. From above it can be understood that the apparatus described by U.S. Pat. No. 3,695,322 is very complex, it contains a very high number of separately working parts and thus it is subjected to failures and malfunctions.
There is, among others, also the U.S. Pat. No. 4,171,042, granted to Meissner of California Processing Machinery on Oct. 16, 1979 that describes a continuous operating apparatus in order to position fruits of the drupe type.
A single-line conveyor is disclosed in which single fruit holding cups are mounted for rocking on support members which run being connected to a pair of driven chains in a vertical carousel conveyor. An orienting device comprises a third chain in backward motion with respect to the pair of driven chains, the third chain centrally engaging single sprockets, each of them driving a shaft with a rotating element positioned inside of each fruit holding cup.
It is understood that such a fruit orienting device as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,171,042, is simpler than the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,695,322 thanks to the fact that each shaft provided with rotating element moves together with the conveyor and is driven by the latter.
Nowadays, in multiple-lane discontinuously operating pitting machines using blades, in which the fruit flight conveyor works in an intermittent motion because it stops during the cutting and the pitting of each row of fruits, a fruit orienting device is vertically moved from below to a working stroke plane of the fruit flight conveyor in order to properly set fruits that must be cut and pitted.
The fruit orienting device is vertically moved to the horizontally running conveyor during each stop thereof, in order to avoid collisions of the fruit orienting device with the conveyor. It should be noted that the fruit orienting device acts in a discontinuous way even if it works in a continuous way. As a result, the period in which the fruit orienting device acts that is only the sum of all stops, is not enough to get a correct positioning of all the fruits that is necessary for an efficient cut for pitting.
A solution to short time useful for obtaining a correct positioning of each fruit is represented by elongating the active stroke plane of the fruit flight conveyor. Another solution is to employ additional manpower that manually and individually provides to obtain the correct positioning of the fruits. Both solutions are expensive and not advantageous.